“Ragtime” novelist E.L. Doctorow and Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul were among the 14 finalists announced Wednesday for the Man Booker International Prize, given every two years for lifetime achievement by a fiction writer who writes in English or whose work is widely available in English translation.

The list included Australia’s Peter Carey, Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru, and Evan S. Connell, author of the novels “Mr. Bridge” and “Mrs. Bridge.” Naipaul is a native of Trinidad who lives in England.

The prize is worth around $85,000 and the winner will be announced in May.

Also cited were Joyce Carol Oates of the United States, Mahasweta Devi of Bangladesh, Scottish author James Kelman, Arnost Lustig of the Czech Republic, Canadian short story writer Alice Munro, Italy’s Antonio Tabucchi, Kenyan Ngugi Wa Thiong’O, Dubravka Ugresic of Croatia and Ludmila Ulitskaya of Russia.

Previous winners of the prize, founded in 2004, are Ismail Kadare of Albania and Nigerian author Chinua Achebe.